The Story of Putin. United States Department of Defense
witness to consistent majorities, often as high as 70% favorability ratings for the strong-man.5 Whether beholden to the societal elites, the public, or both, Putin’s grip on power does remain partially contingent on the acquiescence of these segments of society. A politician that must still appeal to his populace needs to demonstrate some level of commonality with that populace: shared goals, values, beliefs, etc. Anti-Americanism represents an easy way to show commonality with an electorate at risk of becoming disenchanted with Putin’s authoritarian revival. Putin can thereby garner the domestic political benefit of their support.
Whatever Putin’s government and political system is called and regardless of how secure his position is deemed to be, the system he runs depends on him. Regardless of the metaphor employed, Putin is the key, the lynchpin, the apex (etc.) of the current Russian political organism. Because the structure relies on his “manual control,” there is a consensus that his absence or departure would make the system’s survival tenuous.6
1 Dmitri Trenin, Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011), 72.
2 Stephen Kotkin, “Russia under Putin: Toward Democracy or Dictatorship?,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, March 2007, http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200703.kotkin.russiademocracydictatorship.html.
3 Karen Dawisha, “Is Russia’s Foreign Policy that of a Corporatist-Klepotocratic Regime?,” Post-Soviet Affairs 27, no. 4 (2011), 332; Charles Clover, “Who Runs Russia?,” Financial Times, December 16, 2011, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ b4b5a2aa-26cb-11e1–9ed3–00144feabdc0.html.
4 Timothy Colton and Henry E. Hale, “The Putin Vote: Presidential Electorates in a Hybrid Regime,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 502, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25621652.
5 “Russian Public Opinion 2010 — 2011” (Moscow: Levada Analytical Center, 2012), 11.
6 Nikolai Petrov, Masha Lipman, and Henry Hale, “Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: Governance Implications of Hybrid Regimes,” Carnegie Papers, no. 106 (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2010), 26.
3. Implications of Russians’ Anti-Americanism
As alluded to in polling data, the intensity of the Russian populace’s anti-Americanism may appear consistent, but is really anything but. Its roots “do not go very deep” according to Vladimir Shlapentokh, who claims that the Putinist state and its media control are to blame for any rampant anti-Americanism in Russia. Changes in regime and media tone would likely lessen widespread anti-Americanism in the countryside. By controlling the media, the Soviets, like Putin, could control the level of anti-American news or propaganda that reached the isolated Soviet population and thereby directly control their level of anti-Americanism. Prior to 1947 that anti-Americanism was tepid at worst. Soviet leaders intensified or curtailed the anti-American propaganda in their media throughout the Cold War. Under Stalin it was rampant; under Brezhnev it was restricted while pursuing a mutual détente; by the time of Gorbachev’s Perestroika, it was practically non-existent. So the current Russian public’s anti-Americanism may be widespread, but may also remain only skin deep.1
Or are the elements or Russian society beyond the Kremlin inner-circle legitimately receptive to anti-Americanism? Mendelson and Gerber hold that the “Putin Generation” of young Russian adults is extremely receptive to the regime’s anti-Americanism and most youths hold similarly deep anti-American convictions.2 Even if so, such a group only represents a fraction of the populace as a whole. The Putinist regime’s survival depends on a much wider base of support. A combination of die-hard anti-Americans and Shlapentokh’s shallow-rooted and passive anti-Americans, created by the Putinist mechanisms, result in an amalgamation of the entire population that allows the Putinist regime to claim itself as reflective of the consensus of its governed. Russian society is anti-American and, therefore, so too is the Putinist government.
1 Vladimir Shlapentokh, “The Puzzle of Russian Anti-Americanism: From ‘Below’ or From ‘Above,’” Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 5 (2011), 875 — 876.
2 Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber. “Us and Them: Anti-American Views of the Putin Generation,” The Washington Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2008), 137.
E. METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES
The historical and analytical methods will be employed in this thesis covering an extended case study of anti-Americanism in Russia during the years under Vladimir Putin’s leadership from 1999 until present day 2013. The analysis will focus on anti-Americanism as a domestic political tool within an authoritarian state rather than focusing on its use as a geostrategic mechanism within international relations. Specific foreign policy actions and postures taken by Putin and Russia as well as words from his and his surrogates’ own mouths from the historical record will be referenced for contextual analysis with the goal of discerning patterns of anti-Americanism on both the world stage and the Russian stage during the prescribed timeline.
The most important sources for this thesis will be transcripts of statements by Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, as well as contemporary scholarly analyses of Russian politics and foreign policy. Of the sources surveyed, many are primary sources, to include Putin’s autobiographical interview book First Person. Primary source transcripts from the Russian government’s public online archives will be equally valuable, to include Federal Assembly addresses and Putin’s yearly multi-hour long news conferences and public-oriented discussions known as Direct Line in which public and press posit questions on a plethora of topics including foreign affairs and politics. These primary sources, along with the a wide array of all-encompassing academic and scholarly analytical resources available on the subject areas pursuant to this thesis will provide a solid foundation from which to delve into the necessary aspects of anti-Americanism.
As noted already, Russian public polling data spanning the entire era of Putin’s leadership is widely available from different organizations, including the independent Levada Center, as well as the state controlled Russian Public Opinion Research Center. Data from such organizations will facilitate a general analysis of the levels of anti-Americanism beyond the Kremlin walls and Russian government officials’ mouths.
In addition, historical and contemporary works about authoritarian governments and the structures and functionality of such systems will provide valuable insight into the near-authoritarian/hybrid system now entrenched in Putin’s Russia so that an evaluation may be made about the utility of anti-Americanism to domestic politics.